Blog

PIB – May 17 , 2019

GOVERNANCE

Swachh Bharat Mission

Context

  • Recently the Reuters news agency has, earlier today, published a story titled “Modi proclaims a cleaner India, but the reality may be more murky”.
  • In this story, it has raised questions around the progress made under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen), specifically the findings of the recent National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey 2018-19.
  • The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation responded to recent Reuters story about the Swachh Bharat Mission.

About Swachh Bharat mission

  • To accelerate the efforts to achieve universal sanitation coverage and to put focus on sanitation, the Prime Minister of India launched the Swachh Bharat Mission on 2nd October, 2014.
  • The Mission Coordinator for SBM is Secretary, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS).
  • It comprised of two Sub-Missions, the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) and the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban).
  • In Rural India, this would mean improving the levels of cleanliness through Solid and Liquid Waste Management activities and making villages Open Defecation Free (ODF), clean and sanitised.

Objectives of SBM

  • To bring about an improvement in the general quality of life in the rural areas, by promoting cleanliness, hygiene and eliminating open defecation.
  • To accelerate sanitation coverage in rural areas to achieve the vision of Swachh Bharat by 2nd October 2019.
  • To motivate communities to adopt sustainable sanitation practices and facilities through awareness creation and health education.
  • To encourage cost effective and appropriate technologies for ecologically safe and sustainable sanitation.
  • To develop, wherever required, community managed sanitation systems focusing on scientific Solid & Liquid Waste Management systems for overall cleanliness in the rural areas.
  • To create significant positive impact on gender and promote social inclusion by improving sanitation especially in marginalized communities.

Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban)

  • SBM (Urban) is under the Ministry of Urban Development and is commissioned to give sanitation and household toilet facilities in all 4041 statutory towns with a combined population of 377 million.
  • It purposes to establish solid waste management facilities in every town.

Six components of SBM (Urban)

  1. Individual household toilets
  2. Community toilets
  3. Public toilets
  4. Municipal Solid Waste Management
  5. Information and Educating Communication (IEC) and Public Awareness
  6. Capacity Building
  • The mission emphasises on a behavioral change among people, with respect to healthy sanitation practices, by educating them about the damaging effects of open defecation, the environmental dangers spreading from strewn garbage.
  • Urban local bodies are being brought in to design, implement and operate systems in order to promote a facilitating environment for the participation of the private sector in terms of both capital and operations expenditure.

Swachh Bharat Mission (Rural)

  • The Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan has been restructured into the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin).
  • SBM (Rural) aims to bring about an improvement in the general quality of life in the rural areas.
  • It promotes cleanliness, hygiene and set a target of eliminating open defecation free by October 2, 2019.
  • New thrust of this rural sanitation mission is removing obstacles and addressing critical issues that affect results which aims to provide all rural households with individual latrines and build cluster and community toilets on public-private partnership mode.
  • Construction of Anganwadi toilets and management of solid and liquid waste in all Village Panchayats is main object of the mission.

Key challenges for SBM

 Mindset of People

  • Behavioural change influencing 590 million populations in rural areas defecate in the open.
  • The Mindset of a major portion of the population habituated to open defecation needs to be changed.
  • Many of them already have a toilet but prefer to defecate in the open.

Scientific Solid & Liquid Waste Management sanitation practices

  • Absence of professional expertise in the Municipal Corporation to keep the city clean.
  • Lackness of modern technology for how and where the waste will be disposed.
  • The unawareness of responsibility of citizens for managing waste citizens.

Finance

  • The government funds need to be released in a time-bound manner.
  • India’s rural sanitation budget in excess of $20 billion is the largest in the world. Rightly use of fund is imperative.
  • It would be better to release not as per the present formula giving entitlement of States, but on a projected basis, on the basis of the Detailed Project Report of a district as a whole both for water and sanitation.”

Sustainability

  • The lack of any resources for maintenance of school toilets and community sanitary toilets.
  • It could result in rapid deterioration and subsequent non-usage of these over time, severely impacting the sustainability of the programme.

Lack of staff

  • Inadequate trained staff at the ground Level for implementation of rural sanitation.

NARSS Survey on SBM

  • The National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey 2018-19 was conducted by an Independent Verification Agency under the World Bank support project to the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen).

Key findings of the Survey

  • 1 per cent of households in rural India have access to toilets during the survey period and 96.5 per cent of those who had access to toilets uses them.
  • The Survey re-confirmed the open defecation free (ODF) status of 90.7 per cent villages which were declared so by various districts and states and remaining villages also had sanitation coverage of about 93 per cent.
  • 4 per cent of the villages surveyed were found to have minimal litter and minimal stagnant water.

Impact and significance of SBM

  • A recent WHO study reports that Swachh Bharat would have led to saving of 300,000 lives by 2019 and around 150,000 lives would be saved annually thereafter.
  • Since its launch in October 2014, the SBM, the world’s largest sanitation program, has changed the behaviour of hundreds of millions of people with respect to toilet access and usage.
  • In a report titled ‘The Financial and Economic Impact of SBM in India (2017)’ UNICEF estimated that a household in an ODF village in rural India saves Rs. 50,000 every year.
  • Over 9 crore toilets have been built across rural India under the Mission..
  • The Swachh Bharat model of sanitation has led India into a sanitation revolution, and the country is on track for an ODF India by October 2019.

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